http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071218/sc_nm/chimps_math_dc"It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance.""The researchers said the findings shed light on the shared mathematical abilities in humans and non-human primates and shows the importance of language -- which allows for counting and more advanced calculations -- in the evolution of math in humans..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071218/sc_nm/chimps_math_dc"It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance.""The researchers said the findings shed light on the shared mathematical abilities in humans and non-human primates and shows the importance of language -- which allows for counting and more advanced calculations -- in the evolution of math in humans..."

I always saw language as being the key and essential difference between humans and other primates and animals.

I asked one of my sorta geeky friends about this and he said monkeys do not possess language. They do communicate, however. Mainly they send signals about food, or being the same as other monkeys, or warnings of pending danger to other monkeys. They squawk and cry out.

Monkeys can't perform the mental activities required for speaking human type languages but their brains have regions that are similar in structure to language areas in people.

I guess this monkey math article is saying that counting dots in the head does not require a human language. Obviously writing a report about the counting does. I think it would be cool if we could get the monkeys' take on all this.

Does anybody agree with this cognitive evolution book's argument that some cultures make people smarter? What's the LSAT score impact of gangsta rap? street culture? ebonics?

Ah finally, some direction . How are they defining "smart"? I think some cultures are better at imparting skills currently valued by our "meritocratic" society.

I'm slowly (very slowly) wading through the book. But from what I gather it's saying that patterns of thought physically alter the brain, and make new kinds of thoughts possible, which then further alter the brain in a continuing spiral. It keeps saying that what we know is what we demonstrate first in our physical brain form and then this is reflected in our surrounding society. ( a collection of brains in action)It seems to say that if you walk through a neighborhood you see a snap shot of the thinking patterns of the people who live there. A chaotic area reflects disordered thinking.

There's a lot of technical stuff about how the brain created the thumb and so forth which made man's ancestors able to think and do different kinds of things.

I haven't come across a definition of smart yet, but it does appear to state that people are inherently equal (Homo sapiens) and that IQ scores are not immutable (evolutionary jerks), but standardized achievement test scores on average do reflect what in fact people know ( how they think) at any given point. The book claims that people must do what they can't do until they can do it. Then their brains are wired differently and they can do more. There's a great line "illiteracy does not spawn literature."

I would imagine that in law school disordered thinking is not advantageous. Learning how to think like a lawyer has to change the brain.